Kumar Vikas, Sharma Arvind, Sharma Ashish, Joshi Gourav, Dhillon Vipasha
Novel drug delivery systems present an opportunity for formulation scientists to overcome the many challenges associated with antihypertensive drug therapy, thereby improving the management of patients with hypertension. Currently available Anti-hypertensive drugs can be classified into these categories: ACE inhibitors, angiotensin antagonist, calcium channel blocker, diuretics, central sympathomimetics, á- adernergic blocker, vasodilator, â-adernergic blocker. Most of these drugs bear some significant drawbacks such as relatively short half-life, low bioavailability, poor permeability and undesirable side effects. Efforts have been made to design drug delivery systems for anti hypertensive drugs to: a) reduce the dosing frequency, b) increase the bioavailability, c) deliver them to the target cells selectively with minimal side effects. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the various anti hypertensive drug delivery systems that have been developed for achieving sustained drug release kinetics, and for addressing formulation difficulties such as poor solubility, stability and drug entrapment. The physicochemical properties and the in vitro/in vivo performances of various system such as such as sustained release tablets, ceramic implants, nanoparticles, nanocontainers, liposomes, emulsomes, aspasomes, microemulsions, nanopowders and PheroidTM are summarised. This review highlights the significant potential that novel drug delivery systems have for the future effective treatment of hypertensive patients on anti-hypertensive drug therapy.
